


animumque reddas

by blackberrychai



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Margrave Sylvain Jose Gautier, Mercenary Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Post-Canon, Sylvain Jose Gautier Needs A Hug, Trans Character, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28380096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberrychai/pseuds/blackberrychai
Summary: Though Faerghus won the war, Felix left Fódlan to become a mercenary, and hasn’t been seen since.  Wounded near Gautier, though, he reluctantly appears after years away to ask Sylvain for help.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	animumque reddas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raptor_Redemption](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raptor_Redemption/gifts).



> This was written for the 2020 Sylvix Secret Santa! I really enjoyed writing this, though it ended up becoming a little more angsty than I intended. It's a... different kind of holiday spirit, but I think it's still there, in a kind of melancholic way. Many, many thanks to [Oliver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oliver__Niko) for betaing this for me!  
> A minor warning for some non-detailed descriptions of a character being wounded.
> 
> Title is taken from Horace’s _Odes_ 1.16.

The cold air bit at Sylvain’s ears as the walls of Castle Gautier finally came into view above the trees. It was not winter yet, at least not quite, but the autumns here were still bitter by most people’s standards. It was days like this, when he rode alone as the light began to fade, and he could spur his horse up to gallop along the wide forest path, that he felt like perhaps this was not the worst place he could be, the worst thing he could be doing.

But then he would see dear old _chez Gautier_ again, and slow his horse back to a trot, and let the stone sink back into his stomach. He would pull the expression he’d come to think of as his ‘Margrave face’ on, and force himself into something palatable. The beard he’d grown since his father’s death helped, he thought, but every time he looked in the mirror he hated how old he felt with it. But of course, that just meant another excuse to avoid looking in mirrors.

He rode back in through the castle gates, nodding to the guards, and round to the stables. He had only just dismounted and begun to stretch the soreness out of his muscles when his steward came running around the corner.

Marco’s face was pale, his eyes wide and mouth a tight, firm line. “My lord,” he said, giving a hurried bow.

Sylvain frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked, turning to pat at his horse’s flank and begin to unbuckle the saddle cinch.

The steward mumbled something Sylvain couldn’t make out.

“What was that?” he said, trying not to be irritated. He lifted the saddle off his horse, and rummaged in his pocket for the small bag of oats he carried with him.

He heard Marco take a slow breath behind him. “I—I came to tell you that Felix Fraldarius is here.”

Sylvain dropped the saddle. The oats spilled out across the ground, and his horse snorted impatiently.

“I mean—I am unsure what title to use.” The steward rambled on. “Is he Duke Fraldarius? I do not believe he ever formally—”

Sylvain turned, and cut him off with a sharp hand gesture. “Where is he?” he asked urgently.

Marco swallowed. “The infirmary, my lord.”

Sylvain ran.

He didn’t think he’d run so fast in years. Most of his exercise now was on horseback, punctuated with long but slow walks inspecting stretches of farmland, battalions of livestock. There was not much use for such haste nowadays. But still, he fairly flew up the stairs, boots pounding on the stone paving. He almost knocked a maid over on the stairs, and shouted his apologies back without even slowing down.

Who the hell put an infirmary on the third floor, he thought to himself as he ran. He should change that. Yet another flight of stairs, a sharp corner, another—and there. Coming to a sudden, dead stop outside the infirmary door, his gasps for breath suddenly seemed unbearably loud echoing off the stone.

He paused a moment, tried to stop breathing so heavily, but failed. _Fuck it_ , he thought, and pushed the infirmary door open.

Felix lay on one of the beds on the opposite side of the room. The candles were already lit in here, but the last of the grey sun still fell through the windows. Somehow, he looked exactly the same.

The lines of his face were as sharp as ever. Even unconscious, the sharp crease of his brow, the way his mouth set itself—there was something immovable, implacable even, about them, and something deep inside Sylvain broke, just a little. He walked on shaky legs towards him, sat down on the next bed, and sobbed into his hands.

The healer gave him wary looks as he spent the next several hours clutching at Felix’s limp hand. Sylvain had suddenly been struck by an impossible fear that if he did not hold on, this would all slip away like some gossamer-thin dream. And he would burn in fucking Aillel before he let Felix slip away again.

When he finally mustered the courage to let go of him, Sylvain pestered the nurse with all of the hundred questions that had been running through his mind since he got past that initial moment of desperate, awed, shocked relief. What had happened to him? A multitude of scrapes and grazes, and probably a concussion, but the big one was the deep wound in his side, that was just on the edge of becoming infected. Would he be all right? She shrugged impatiently. It was too early to tell. Probably. When had he got here? Late this morning, not long after he had left, in fact. After that one, she waved him off and glared until he stopped pestering her.

Sylvain returned to his vigil, and sat back down on the next bed, his fingers clenching white-knuckled in the pristine sheets. He looked over at Felix, lying there too still, his torso swaddled in bandages just visible under the light shirt they’d dressed him in. Unless he’d stopped wearing them, they must have taken away the wrappings Felix had always used to bind his chest. He’d hate that when he woke up. _If_ he woke up.

It took him a while to muster the courage to actually ask. “Will he wake up?” he asked hoarsely, after another hour or so of alternating between staring at the rise and fall of Felix’s breathing and watching the healer mix things in little jars.

She sighed. “I don’t know. He’s been in and out of it, and he’s got a bit of a fever, so I’m not sure how lucid he’ll be.”

Sylvain looked back down at him. He hadn’t prayed in years—not since he was a child, really. But he prayed now.

Felix woke up when a servant came in with dinner for them all. When the tray clattered down on the little table beside him, he stirred, and Sylvain’s heart leapt at the twitching of his eyes under the lids. It was easy to see the moment he came fully awake, because every muscle in his body tensed at once. He lay stock still for a long moment, then opened his eyes and looked straight and Sylvain.

Sylvain looked back, and they stared at each other. Then Felix squinted, narrowing his eyes. “Sylvain?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sylvain replied, reaching out to touch his arm. His heart was so high in his throat he thought he might vomit. “Hi, Fe.”

Felix’s irritated confusion turned immediately to anger. “Don’t call me that,” he snapped—or at least tried to. It came out slightly slurred, and he began to cough.

The healer hurried over, holding a vial. “Drink this,” she said sharply.

Felix turned his glare on her, but when she pressed it to his lips, he swallowed obediently. He shuddered slightly as it went down. “Water?” he asked.

She nodded, and proceeded to prop him half-upright in the bed with a business-like efficiency. He gulped desperately at the glass that was handed to him, but just frowned at the food beside him.

“No,” he said. Goddess, Sylvain thought, how did he manage to sound so commanding even in this state. Then he noticed Felix was staring at him.

He was about to say something about it, when he noticed how Felix’s eyes were beginning to turn unfocused again. “Felix?” he said. “Hey, are you OK?”

Felix mustered a faint frown again, they slumped wearily back down, pushing at his excessive pillows. “Sylvain,” he muttered, and passed out again.

When Felix woke up next, just after dawn, Sylvain was still sitting on the next bed in the infirmary’s small row, leaned back against a pile of pillows stolen from the cupboard down the corridor. He’d drifted off a few times through the night, but jolted quickly back awake every time. Felix’s eyes came into focus a lot more quickly when he opened them this time.

“Hi,” Sylvain breathed. The healer was asleep on the little emergency bed in the adjoining room, and even his whisper felt very loud in here.

Felix just breathed for a moment. “Hi,” he said eventually.

“You seem more… alert, now.”

Felix stared, then nodded briefly. “Yes,” he said, and looked away.

It takes all of Sylvain’s courage to muster a smile. “It’s good to see you,” he offers. “Though perhaps these aren’t ideal circumstances.”

He just gets a sniff in response. “I had no other choice.”

“What happened?” Sylvain asked cautiously.

Felix gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Bandits.”

“Surely you can cope with a few bandits?”

He looked offended. “Of course I can. Fuck you.”

That managed to startle a laugh out of Sylvain. “Fine then,” he said. “What went wrong?”

Felix sighed with irritation. “I was exhausted, Sylvain, and there were twenty-three of them.”

“Shit,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Where are they now?”

Another scowl. “What do you mean where are they?” Felix said. “They’re dead, of course.”

“All of them?” Sylvain asked.

“Of _course_ all of them,” Felix retorted, and his face was drawn with the proper lines of anger Sylvain hadn’t seen in far too long. It was probably entirely the wrong thing to be sentimental about, but his chest felt a little tight seeing it anyway.

“Fuck, Felix,” Sylvain said, running a hand through his hair. “Have you done anything in the last ten years except kill people?”

“It hasn’t been ten years,” Felix said stiffly.

“Almost.”

“Not yet. And anyway, yes, I have. I travelled a lot,” he said.

“Travelled. And did you do anything while you were in any of these places but fight?” Sylvain asked, then shook his head. “No, never mind. Travelling. Is that why none of us could find you?”

“You were looking for me?” Felix asked, face blank.

Sylvain’s jaw actually fell slightly open. “We—what? Of course we were!”

Felix turned his face away to stare at the other wall. “You shouldn’t have. I left for a reason.”

“Well, it might have been nice if you’d told us that!” Sylvain said. His anger was more slow-moving than Felix’s, but that did not even slightly mean that it was not there.

His face closed off. “I am a fighter, Sylvain. A soldier. Fódlan didn’t need me any more.”

“I—that’s the biggest fucking load of bullshit I’ve ever heard,” Sylvain said. He felt almost cold with anger now. “Who do you think didn’t need you? Because for fuck’s sake, Felix, we needed you!”

“And who is _we_?” Felix sneered.

“Everyone! Ingrid! Dimitri! _Me_ , Felix, you just disappeared and I—I didn’t—” Sylvain broke off, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, more calmly. “I didn’t mean to get into this now. Especially not when you’re still sick.”

Felix glared. “I’m not _sick_ —”

Sylvain glared, and he stopped. He snorted heavily, and crossed his arms over his chest, but didn’t reply further.

“So, then,” Sylvain said, in his best margrave voice—the one he used for irritating meetings and dealing with recalcitrant diplomats. “Where did you travel?”

Felix looked as though he didn’t know whether he should still be angry. “Dagda,” he began slowly, “At first. Then Brigid for a while, Morfis. I was in Almyra for a while, but I didn’t like the climate.” He shrugged. “Sreng, most recently.”

“You’ve been in Sreng?” Sylvain asked.

He only got a nod in reply.

“For how long?”

Another shrug. “Six months or so. Not that long.”

Sylvain took a deep breath. “You’ve been next to my territory for six fucking months, and you only came here now?”

“I wasn’t going to come at all,” Felix said. “I was going to stay in Sreng. But the fucking bandits decided to flee across the border. And then I was injured.”

“So that’s the only reason you’re here? Because—because you were injured?”

Felix tensed visibly. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Thank you for your generosity.”

Sylvain slammed a fist abruptly into the mattress beside him. “Damn it, Felix, why are you talking to me like that? You know that’s not what I meant. Don’t fucking treat me like some stranger.”

His face shuttered. “No, Sylvain, you don’t get it. We _are_ strangers now. I’ll be gone as soon as I’m recovered.” Then he closed his eyes, and determinedly began to feign sleep.

Sylvain screwed his eyes shut, and did his best to breathe.

Sylvain barely left the infirmary for the next two days. He slept in the bed next to Felix’s, restless and constantly stirring awake. Felix spent most of it unconscious—a side effect of the potions to burn the infection out of his body. A tightness had settled into Sylvain’s chest when he first saw him lying there, breaths shallow and face still, and it hadn’t lifted in the slightest with their last conversation. Felix woke intermittently through the first day, but still didn’t speak to Sylvain. He preferred, apparently, to reply to his attempts at conversation with monosyllabic grunts, and stare angrily at the ceiling the rest of the time. Even his sleep seemed angry, shifting restlessly back and forth, until he turned in a way that pulled on his still-healing wound, and he came awake with a sudden gasp.

On the second day, he managed to stay awake for most of the day, even eating some soup and bread, and continuing his death stares at the ceiling. By the afternoon, Sylvain was tired of it. He slipped into the healer’s office after she declared him well enough that he could try getting out of bed later, if he was careful.

“Would he be OK to walk around the grounds a little?” he asked.

She inclined her head. “I suppose. Only if someone stays with him, though,” she warned. “And don’t let him do more than walk slowly.”

“I’ll stay close, I promise,” Sylvain said with a grin, then bounced back into the infirmary proper and Felix. “Come on! We’re going out.”

Felix turned his glare from the ceiling to Sylvain. “What?”

“Out! Fresh air! But you have to promise to be careful.”

The glare intensified. “No,” he said, but he was pushing the covers back and swinging his legs around gingerly to lower them to the floor. He gathered up his clothes, and frowned at Sylvain until he turned his back.

“Right,” he said once he was dressed. “Let’s go.”

Sylvain smiled, and led him out into the corridor. As soon as they got to the stairs, Felix attempted to rush ahead and run down them in the way he had done ever since they were small. Sylvain caught his shoulder, held him back.

“Don’t run, Felix. You have to be careful.”

That got him another glare, but he walked down the stairs at a more normal pace.

When they got outside, it was just starting to edge into one of those perfectly crisp late autumn evenings, the sun sinking golden behind the hills. Felix’s shoulders seemed to loosen a little as soon as they got out of the castle, and even more once they walked past the inner wall, and out towards the gardens, set behind the keep itself to be out of the way of any invading forces.

Sylvain steered him towards the apple orchards, the trees now bare of fruit, but their leaves in the last flush of their radiant display of colours. The orchard was tucked down a little in a dip in the ground, sheltered underneath the walls of the castle, where the worst of the wind and the frost would not find the trees. It was Sylvain’s pride and joy—something that had almost failed under the last years of his father’s stewardship as sickness and war distracted him, but which he had practically nursed back to health himself.

“The trees look good here,” Felix commented, and some of the tight feeling in Sylvain’s chest loosened.

“Thanks,” he said, running a hand down the rough bark of the nearest tree. “Took a lot of work, you know.” He sighed, and pushed away from the tree. “You remember how much time we used to spend here as kids?”

The creases around Felix’s eyes deepened a little. “Yes,” he said tersely. He turned away from Sylvain, and his shoulders seemed to hunch forward a little.

Felix had always loved the orchard. He’d loved climbing the apple trees, even back when he was forced into prim little dresses which he ripped the instance they got outside. They’d spent hours here, avoiding Miklan, playing hide-and-seek, gathering fallen apples through the late summer into the autumn, and carefully dissecting them to make sure the wasps hadn’t got inside. Once they’d made a little camp fire and attempted to bake some of the apples. It hadn’t worked, of course—Sylvain’s fire spell was terrible, and they barely got any more than a smoulder, and their parents had discovered them and been furious soon enough. And then once the snow came, it was the best place to build their little snow forts, and the cover of the trees provided the most exciting location for their endless wars of snowball fights.

Which was to say, Sylvain didn’t understand why Felix was acting like this. “I thought you liked it here?” he said quietly.

Felix looked around, scuffed one foot on the grass. “I did,” he said tersely.

“Felix?” he asked, taking a step closer.

“I’m fine,” he snapped. “Leave it, Sylvain.”

“No, I’m not just going to leave it!” he said. “All I did was bring you to the fucking apple orchard and you’ve gone all closed off. What is it? I thought I’d brought you to a place you liked!”

Felix turned back to him, glare renewed. “Past tense, Sylvain,” he spat. “I’m not a child any more. Nor are you, though you seem intent on acting like one.”

He threw up his hands. “How the hell am I acting like a child!” he exclaimed.

“Tch. _Margrave_ Gautier has been spending the past few days sitting in the infirmary doing nothing at all. Are you as useless at running your territory as I always thought you would be?”

That stung. “My steward is very capable. There hasn’t been anything that has required my personal attention,” he said.

Felix lifted a single eyebrow. “I’m sure,” he said, then turned to stride away down the length of the orchard.

Cursing, Sylvain reluctantly followed him. The worst part is, Felix wasn’t entirely wrong. He was wrong about Sylvain not doing his job most of the time, of course—he’d honestly surprised himself at how hard-working he’d become—but in truth, he should not have spent all his time lately sitting still, watching Felix.

“Felix, please,” he called. But Felix was already gone, moving fast despite his injury, and Sylvain lost him among the trees.

Sylvain was prepared for the next night, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting any less when exactly what he was expecting happened. He woke to Felix shuffling around the room, all sharp contrasts of pale skin and dark hair in the moonlight. Muttering curses under his breath, he was knelt on the floor, peering under his bed.

“Looking for something?” Sylvain asked nonchalantly, sitting up.

Felix started, and glared up at him. “Where the fuck are my boots?”

He just shrugged back. “Somewhere. We can find them in the morning.”

“Fuck you,” Felix said, venomous all of a sudden.

Sylvain just shut his eyes for a moment. “Go back to bed, Felix,” he said levelly.

“You fucking arsehole, you took them away, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” he said. “Because I knew you’d do this.”

“Fuck. You.” Felix said again, sitting back down on his bed, fully dressed, facing resolutely away from Sylvain.

Sylvain glared at his back. “You say I don’t know you any more? I think this fucking proves that I do.”

Felix abruptly rolled himself over the bed to sit on the side closest to Sylvain. “Why,” he hissed, “Will you not just let me go?”

“Because I did that once,” Sylvain said, deadly serious. “And there’s no way in hell I’m letting you be that much of a coward again.”

His eyes flashed, and all of a sudden he lunged across the gap between the beds, reached out and grabbed hold of the collar of Sylvain’s shirt. “I am not a fucking coward,” he said, voice loud in the quiet room.

Sylvain felt all his anger abruptly leave him. “Yes, you are,” he said flatly. “Not in battle, not when you fight, but where it really matters? You’re the biggest fucking coward I’ve ever met.” Then he reached out to grip Felix’s collar in return. “Just stay a few more days,” he said. “Please. You don’t have to run yet.”

Felix’s hair was like dark water around his shoulders as he tried to pull back. “No,” he said, but his voice was weaker.

“Please,” Sylvain said again, letting his desperation tinge his voice. “I just want a few days. You should let yourself heal properly and I just—Goddess, Felix, I missed you. Can you not understand that?”

“I have nothing to offer you,” Felix said, voice dark and wretched. “I left for a reason, Sylvain. You don’t want me around.”

“I promise you,” he replied, “I do. I always will.”

There was hesitation in Felix’s face now, or at least what Sylvain could see of it. _Chiaroscuro_ , he thought deliriously, with the part of his brain that was still sleep-deprived and desperate. Bright silver moonlight, and dark shadow. Carefully, he pulled Felix in, until he was close enough to envelop in a hug. He was stiff and tense, but his fingers loosened on Sylvain’s collar, and he slumped to sit properly on the bed beside him.

“Fine,” he said reluctantly. “A few more days.”

They woke up the next morning when the healer bustled in, and found them curled up in the same bed. Felix was still fully dressed in his day clothes, but she only raised one eyebrow briefly at them.

“Come on, I have to examine you,” she said briskly.

Sylvain rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and watched her prod at a scowling Felix, before having him remove his shirt so she could unwrap his dressings. He slipped out of the room to go back to his own room and dress, but also to avoid Felix’s aggrieved expression. He’d never much liked having his injuries seen to.

When he returned, Felix was dressed again, and stood by the door tapping a foot impatiently. “Come on,” he said the moment he saw Sylvain. “I need my boots.”

He sighed, then fished them out from where they were wedged between the bed he’d been using and the wall.

“You bastard,” Felix said as he pulled them on, but it was far softer than his insults in the middle of the night had been.

“You’re in a good mood,” Sylvain commented cautiously.

Felix shrugged. “Healer cleared me to leave.”

He snorted. “Forgive me if I don’t take your word for it,” he said, going over to knock on the door of the healer’s room.

She opened it and scowled at him. “How is he?” Sylvain asked

She sniffed. “He’s a terrible patient, you know. But the wound’s healing well. As long as he doesn’t do anything too strenuous, he can leave if he wants. And,” she said, sounding exasperated. “If you can, persuade him not to bind his chest as tightly as usual for now? I couldn’t persuade him to leave it off, but he shouldn’t put any extra stress on his torso.”

“Thanks, I’ll try,” Sylvain said, smiling at her. When he turned back to him, Felix had an _I-told-you-so_ glare on his face, mixed with a defiant scowl. He rolled his eyes back. “Come on, I’m hungry. Want to go raid the kitchens?”

“Sylvain, you’re the fucking Margrave. And we’re not ten any more. You are aware you can just… ask for them to bring you food?”

He grinned. “Well, yeah, but that’s not as fun now, is it?”

Felix clattered down the stairs like he had when he was a child, all eager motion and reckless abandon. “Careful!” Sylvain called, following a little more sedately. “Goddess, you’d never know you were practically sliced open a few days ago.”

It earned him a sharp glare from Felix, shot over his shoulder, and a mildly obscene gesture. Sylvain chuckled. In some ways, so little had changed.

In the kitchen, their entry sent half the staff into a fluttering panic. Sylvain did his best to be an attentive and present employer, but even so it wasn’t like he spent much time in the kitchens. The other half, though—the older half, mostly—were looking at the two of them with indulgent smiles. He saw them for a second through their eyes, just overgrown versions of the children who had spent so much time lurking in the corners here, avoiding Miklan and being fed all the scraps of food they could beg off the cooks, with the insatiable appetites of the ever-growing.

Sylvain sweet-talked a loaf of bread and some cold off-cuts of meat out of the cooks, while Felix stood there and rolled his eyes. He gathered them up in his arms, pinched two apples from a bowl on a counter-top, and tugged Felix back out into the corridors.

“Where are we going?” Felix asked, cautious but apparently not upset as Sylvain tugged him by the wrist through the castle.

“You’ll see,” Sylvain said happily, and pulled him up the stairs.

They climbed up through the floors of never-used rooms meant for diplomacy, over-used guest bedrooms, then up further, past the floors of servants’ quarters, until they reached the little narrow ladder that led up into the attics.

There was more space up here than Sylvain could ever manage to fill. His ancestors had apparently had the same thought, though, and had thrown every even possibly useful scrap up here, and the result was a chaotic and surprisingly cramped space tucked up under the rafters. Sylvain had to bend almost double to walk in here now, and he squatted awkwardly to navigate through the unruly piles to one specific corner.

“Here,” he said, throwing himself down with relief onto a low couch that he had hauled over for this exact purpose. He stretched out his back uncomfortably, and beckoned Felix closer. “Come on!”

The corner had an old carpet spread out on the floor, dusty and with the colours faded, but still thick and soft. The back of the couch fenced off the little area, and the rest was filled with cushions, a few little tables, and a large storm lantern tucked into the corner. Felix crouched awkwardly near the foot of the couch, then gingerly retrieved a cushion from a nearby pile, and sat on it surprisingly primly. It was dark up here, the windows hardly counting as windows—more like little boxy holes into the outside world, filled with the cheapest glass possible and therefore so rife with ripples and flaws that you could barely see through them. The dust hung in the air in the slanted beams, and Felix suddenly, abruptly, sneezed.

“Bless you,” Sylvain said mildly. “But look. This is why I brought you up here.” He reached out from the head of his couch and pulled aside an old curtain. He’d rigged it up here when he was perhaps fourteen, to stop the light from falling on this little nest he’d created out of the odds and ends stashed up here, and then risking it being found and having his hard work ruined.

Behind the curtain was the only unblemished window in the whole attic. Well, perhaps calling it unblemished was a bit of a stretch, but it was certainly the clearest. The glass only warped slightly on one side, sending odd lines through the distant view of the mountains stretching out into Sreng.

“Oh,” Felix said, sounding slightly breathless. It was spectacular from this high up, the weak sun illuminating the peaks and crevices of the landscape, the rising plains of snow as the foothills grew, the faint lines of smoke from the occasional farmhouses.

“I was going to show you this when I first set this all up,” Sylvain said, staring resolutely out of the window. If he looked at Felix now, he would not be able to stop his face from crumpling. “Except then you didn’t visit that year. And then I forgot about it, and then… well, then you didn’t come here for a long time.”

He heard the rustle of Felix shifting in place, but he said nothing.

“You coming to visit was always the best part of my year, you know,” Sylvain went on. He could feel his voice thickening, his throat feeling oddly narrow and dry, and he hurried to get his words out before he choked up entirely. “When the war ended, do you know what I thought? I thought _maybe Felix can come visit again now_. We were finally free, you know? And then you were gone, and I couldn’t stand it here, so I spent all my time in Fhirdiad. And then my father died.”

Felix shifted again, and actually spoke this time. “I did hear about that.”

“Oh, so you were keeping tabs on news from home?” Sylvain said with a hollow laugh. “Yeah, good to know, Fe.”

Another silence.

“When they made me Margrave,” Sylvain said into it, “And I was stuck here again, I came up here every day. Every fucking day. And you know what I thought about? I thought about the view from this window, and how I never fucking got to show it to you. How pathetic is that?”

“It’s not pathetic,” Felix said quietly. His voice was low, serious. All the bite seemed to have gone out of it, and it was just flat and dull. They lapsed back into silence.

“I do understand why you left, you know,” Sylvain said. “I know you think I don’t, but… I get it. God, I was tempted to do it too.”

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t about avoiding responsibility,” Felix said, sharp again. “That’s your thing, not mine.”

He laughed, a slightly hysterical sound. “I know. And that’s fair, I suppose, but it’s not what I meant. It’s the… the expectations, right? About what we are, what we’re going to be?”

“Stop pretending you understand, Sylvain,” he snapped. “You weren’t the one stuck being called fucking _Duchess_ by the people who were supposedly your responsibility.”

“Felix, I’m trying to say I do understand!” Sylvain sighed in frustration. “I’m not saying it’s the same, but… if it were me, if everyone here was seeing me as the Margrave’s little daughter? I definitely would have run.”

“But it’s not you, is it,” retorted Felix.

Sylvain squeezed his eyes shut, and took a deep breath. “Look, I didn’t bring you here to argue with you. Maybe I don’t understand, I don’t know. But all I’m trying to tell you is that… there’s still things here for you. People. We still— _I_ still care. And you aren’t going to fucking change that.”

Felix fell silent, staring out at the mountains. “I suppose,” he said quietly, “That I missed you too.”

“Of course you did,” Sylvain said, doing his best to affect his usual nonchalant tone. “Who can resist my effervescent wit? Anyone’s world would be a darker place without it.”

“Sylvain,” Felix said, half in warning, half in fond exasperation.

Letting out a breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding, Sylvain laughed. The silence that wrapped around them now was somehow warmer, softer, infinitely more comfortable, and Sylvain felt suddenly intoxicated by it.

“I didn’t know,” he said, “Until you left that it was possible to miss someone that much.” It was probably too much, hell, it was definitely too much. But it slipped out anyway.

Felix looked up at him from his perch on the floor.

Suddenly Sylvain couldn’t stop the words pouring out of him. “I was—Goddess, I was so in love with you, Felix. I waited through that whole fucking charade of a war, wishing and hoping, and then you were _gone_.”

“You were in love with me?” Felix asked slowly.

“Of course I was,” said Sylvain—matter-of-fact, stark. He was in too deep now, and it was so much easier to just let everything he’d been holding in the past—fuck. Probably nearly ten years since he first fell in love with Felix.

“Why did you never say?”

Sylvain laughed. “Guess I’m not the only one who’s a coward, Fe. Wasn’t ready to hear how brutally you’d have shot me down.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Felix said, “I wouldn’t have shot you down.”

“I—what?” Sylvain blurts out, stunned.

“Are you really that much of an idiot?” he said scathingly. “Sylvain, I’ve been at least half in love with you ever since I even knew what that meant.”

“You were?” Sylvain said dumbly. “Oh, shit.”

Felix snorted, but didn’t say anything else.

“Do you think,” he said into the still air. “Felix, do you think we just… missed our chance?”

“That’s a stupid way of looking at it,” he replied immediately. “Nothing works like that.”

Sylvain stared across at him, and Felix resolutely did not meet his eyes. “Are you still going to leave again?” he asked softly.

Felix shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What if… what if I asked you to stay?” he went on, growing a little bolder. “Would you at least consider it?”

Felix’s eyes flickered to Sylvain’s for just a moment. “Sylvain,” he said, his voice sounding almost broken.

In response, Sylvain found himself practically falling off the couch onto his knees, then shuffling awkwardly across the carpet towards Felix.

“Even if you do go,” he said, still moving towards him, “Maybe you could just… come back again?”

He was within touching distance now, and he lifted one hand towards Felix, then let it hover just above his shoulder. Gently, so gently, he pushed a loose lock of his hair over behind Felix’s shoulder, and let his hand fall to rest against his neck.

Felix shivered, and Sylvain felt it run through him too, and was about to withdraw his hand when he felt Felix lean into it.

“I suppose…” he said. “I could at least come back.”


End file.
